Stopping out

Peter Thiel, founder of paypal and co-founder of facebook is offering a $100,000 fellowship for students who are expected to drop out of college upon receiving the award (recipients must be 20 years or younger)- Edward Tenner at the Atlantic asserts that none of the celebrity trailblazers of the web would have had the opportunity to be successful if had not been for the none dropouts that paved the way for their education and eventual departure. Interesting. Jon Marcus of Times Higher Education:

The San Francisco-based founder of PayPal and co-founder of Facebook is offering two-year fellowships of up to $100,000 (£63,800) to 20 entrepreneurs or teams of entrepreneurs aged under 20 in a worldwide competition that closes this week.

With the money, the recipients are expected to drop out of university – Thiel calls it “stopping out” – and work full time on their ideas.

“Some of the world’s most transformational technologies were created by people who stopped out of school because they had ideas that couldn’t wait until graduation,” Thiel says. “This fellowship will encourage the most brilliant and promising young people not to wait on their ideas either.”